1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the treatment of speech and language learning impairment in children. The present invention specifically relates to a pharmaceutical intervention and method for treating an apraxia of speech in children.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current clinic diagnoses for cerebral dysfunctions are generally categorized according to a child's behavioral symptoms. Apraxia or an apraxia of speech is characterized by loss of the ability to execute or carry out learned purposeful movements despite having the desire and the physical ability to perform the movements. Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is characterized with the co-existence of attentional problems and hyperactivity. Mental retardation is a disorder characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors, generally with an Intelligence Quotient score under 70. But it is not caused by in coordination, sensory loss, or failure to comprehend simple commands. Aphasia is characterized as an inability to produce and/or comprehend language. Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behaviors. Dyslexia is characterized broadly as a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid naming. The descriptions of each of these diseases are overlapping and ambiguous. Almost all of these diseases involve certain level of language learning impairment.
Due to the lack of systematic methods for differentiating the neuronal physiological causes of these abnormal symptoms and behaviors, many early childhood development problems may thus be miss-treated. Infants, toddlers, children and adolescents who have disorders with speech, sound production, vocabulary building, difficulty with understanding the spoken word, clarity of speech, word retrieval, organization, reading fluency, word decoding, reading comprehension may also possess similar behavior symptoms as those of mental retardation, autism, emotionally disturbed, dyslexia, laziness and stupidity. For example, an impairment that inhibits or delays a child's early language learning ability, such as failure to acquire consistency in sound production, vocalization of consonants, vowels by early infancy will prevent a child from the development of the child's intellectual comprehension of commands and intellectual capacity. This could lead to the subsequent lack of emotional and social interaction skills, leading to clinical diagnosis of autism. But this child may have a level of other normal brain functions, for example, the part of brain that allows for normal non-verbal development and thus has the potential to be restored with medical treatment.
However, current methods of therapeutic treatment are mostly focused on behavioral and physical therapies, or strictly focused on language training. These physical trainings alone may not be sufficient for children with certain level of brain dysfunctions. Mistreated children may miss their critical development and learning stages, resulting in permanent behavior impairment.
The two cerebral hemispheres in humans are structurally and functionally asymmetrical. It is well established that the right brain hemisphere sustains the functions necessary for survival, such as visual-spatial and emotional abilities while language abilities such as grammar, vocabulary and literal meaning are typically lateralized to the left brain hemisphere. During growing up, the development of the two brain hemispheres may be differentially affected or impaired by combination of many random factors. However, the left and right brain hemispheres may compensate each other's functions to a certain level with the correct use of medicine and physical trainings. It is possible for a language learning ability impaired child with a level of normal development of non-verbal functions to be medically induced to establish the positive-feedback of language learning.
Thus methods are needed for characterizing the level of a normal development of a language learning impaired child; and the combined medical treatments based on the biochemistry of the brain functions provide a novel option in addition to physical therapy and language training alone.